Rivers’ career was a masterclass in ugly growth. He didn't trend. He meandered. He took the gestural brushstrokes of Abstract Expressionism and slammed them into the figurative realism of the old masters. He painted The Death of Sardanapalus as a commentary on Delacroix, but he also painted his mother-in-law, Berdie, smoking a cigarette. He blurred the line between high art and low entertainment before "blurring the lines" became a cliché in every branding meeting.
We need that documentary because we need permission to grow slowly. We need permission to be messy, to be contradictory, to be irrelevant for a decade before becoming essential again. --- Documentary Growing 1981 Larry Rivers LINK Download
An algorithm cannot process a bridge. Algorithms deal in clusters, in "you might also like," in pre-defined categories. Rivers defies categorization. He was a poet who painted, a sculptor who played bebop, a filmmaker who wrote criticism. Rivers’ career was a masterclass in ugly growth
In the end, Growing Larry Rivers wouldn't just be a film. It would be a detox protocol. Unplug from the feed. Sit in the dark. Watch a man struggle to turn chaos into form. That isn't just entertainment. That is a survival skill. He took the gestural brushstrokes of Abstract Expressionism